The (Minus 700 whoops Minus 800) Club

What is -800?

It is, in gamblers' parlance, the price on Barack Obama to win the Democratic nomination for President. It means that if you think Obama's going to win you have to bet $8 to make a $1 profit. It impounds a 89% probability of Obama's winning the nomination.

That speaks loudly. I am a believer in materialism in its purest micro form and in its macro-dialectical form. Think of the latter. It is the point in Das Kapital at which Karl Marx acknowledges his debt to Adam Smith. All dialectical materialism means is that the clash of ideas gets to the right result more or less. Practical materialism tells you that a lot of people who have stakes in an outcome of a random variable put a value on each outcome and a correspondent likelihood of that outcome obtaining. -800. Obama 89% to win nomination. Whether or not there has been a clash of ideas as such or as rich a clash as we would have liked there was and still is a competition. And Obama-800 is the snapshot of where that competition is today.

As for materialism in the sense of collecting toys and showing them off, I hate that for myself, but so long as I don't have to do it or hang around with people who do it, I don't care. In fact, I found myself not long ago presenting the notion that Wall Street was a much more nuanced movie than people gave it credit for and there was some case to be made that the Gordon Gekko character was the progressive, not the agit-prop capitalist straw-man. And I made that argument in partial defense of Michael Vick! Now, you see why Fairlane calls me "fucking certifiable," si o no? Cierto!

We'll take that one up at another time, however. When Vick is back in the news or Oliver Stone's George W. Bush movie goes into production or whenever.

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When the campaign started I knew that I would favor Kucinich and was not sure of what to make of Edwards. I believe that Gore's "conversion" was sincere because he felt robbed. I suspected that Edwards's "conversion" might have been sincere because he might have felt robbed but was overruled by Kerry on election night. I knew I was not considering Joe Biden because I thought he was unstable. I had no good read on either Richardson or Dodd, but both seemed competant and experienced. I was neutral on Hillary Clinton leaning against because I didn't not like her votes and general attitude on foreign policy. I was sure she wasn't a progressive Democrat but I knew that she wasn't a conservative Democrat either. As a NYC resident, I held a neutral to slightly positive view of her but had voted against her in favor of Jonathan Tassini in the primary. And had passed on her Senatorial defense against Spencer. I did, however, like her campaign style, her tenacity, her ambition and her self-identification as a "Democrat." I came in extremely suspicious of Barack Obama. I liked that he self-described as "anti-war" and I liked that he, too, was ambitious. But there was a big problem. That week in August of 2004. Regulars know what I'm talking about but for newcomers...

....I kind of liked how the Democratic National Convention of 2004 started out. Howard Dean gave a very strong speech. Al Sharpton probably gave the speech of his life. It was very humorous but also serious and set forth a set of progressive principles that the Party should stand for. Then came Obama on Wednesday or Thursday night. I don't exactly know why but that speech made me kind of seasick. It sure was weird. I was hearing stuff about "a mighty gawd" and there being "no such thing as liberal Americans or conservative Americans," and an odd moment when this fellow on the screen said "our gay friends" as if he had swallowed spoiled milk. There was something about "getting beyond partisanship." And when it was over the response was thunderous. I heard the commentators talking about a "rock star." Me, I ate a handful of Klonopins and turned off the TV. What the fuck did I just hear? Wasn't this a Democratic National convention? Wasn't the nominee of the party John Kerry? Wasn't there a real bastard to get out of the White House? Why was this fellow carrying on this way as if he were at the Republican National Convention? Why was I being lectured at for being a Democrat, for being a liberal? Why did that word "gay" come out of his mouth all funny? Why had this fellow spent the previous 40 minutes refuting everything that Dean and Sharpton had said, that Kerry was sure to say the next night?

I thought about the cadence and the baritone. It was kind of like Jesse Jackson's but Jackson would never espouse those views. Jackson was a Democrat. A liberal Democrat. OK. Maybe it was a church thing I didn't understand.

Every culture has its oddities and mine has plenty. Carl "The Chief" Rosen and his enlightened garmentos who made peace with the ILGWU would probably seem awfully strange and, perhaps, somewhat off-putting to an African-American, what with all the money and the strange confluence of all that money and a liberal vibe and the gambling and the old dudes getting together in delis for hushed conversations and bookmakers and all of that. He might have seemed exploitative and overly aggressive and perhaps "the oppressor." Who knows? I only know that gay people and lefty zillionaires with a street-mentality are familiar to me because I grew up in that environment and Evangelical, Baptist and AME Christianity is unfamiliar to me because I didn't. It's as threatening to me as "gay" is to Obama and his electorate, I suppose.

Still, I was glad the intoning fellow on the TV was a Democrat and had a big lead on Alan Keyes in his Senate race. We needed that seat. Moseley-Braun had it and for no good reason lost it to a odd-bird named Peter Fitzgerald who campaigned slightly to the left of the Archduke Ferdinand but voted pretty moderately and then disappeared. OK. Fair enough. I didn't like what I heard in that speech by Barack Obama. It felt intrusive and hectoring and I wasn't digging being lectured by someone who seemed to belong in the Republican Party. I checked the right-wing sites like the National Review Online the next day and sure enough I saw headlines like "Obama: Right Man, Wrong Party." My ears, it seemed, had not deceived me.

This guy might be a fly in the ointment in like 8-10 years, I thought. But it's another seat. Besides, there was the worst possible news the next day: The Mets had traded Scott Kazmir to the Devil Rays for Victor Zambrano. My father told me that he'd heard on WFAN that the trade was forced upon GM Omar Minaya by two Mets veteran pitchers, Al Leiter and John Franco. Kazmir's sin, besides being small, immensely talented and the son of Houston brain-surgeon, and thus very much not a jock type, well, his sin was having changed the radio station in the whirlpool room from Classic Rock to Rap. Urgh.

Time passes and there's no good news about Obama. He changes his tune on Iraq from unabashedly against to unabashedly for. As a Senate noviciate, he picks not Dick Durbin the venerable liberal from Illinois as his mentor but rather Joe Lieberman, probably the man who scalds my nuts more than anyone in politics. And then there's this bit of business:

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27118

So, I hadn't heard wrong. This Obama was a fucking homophobe. And a hawk. And the protege of Joe Lieberman. The hawk and Lieberman thing I sort of understood. He was a conservative Black Democrat. The homophobia I didn't get at all.

Then, I got it. It really was that cultural Christian v. Gay thing. I suppose I understand that in my community "gay" is another variant of "normal" and in his not-so-much and attention had to be paid. That was basic politics, I guess. Dean, Romney and Mayor Newsome were really the only major pols leading on this issue after all. It was poison for everybody else. Especially John Edwards. And it was back to the very reason the speech made me seasick. Barack Obama was a right-wing Trojan Horse. It didn't work with J.C. Watts but by Gawd it would work with Obama. Still, a vote's a vote. And his voting record wasn't all that bad anyway. Kind of centrist. Not the worst. He wasn't my Senator. Not that either Schumer or Clinton were particularly enlightened either. Two more centrists with bags full of AIPAC cash.

So, he comes out with some ghost-written book. Full of platitudes. Big deal. Nobody thought either Clinton wrote any of their books. Par for the course. Whatever. Then, he announces for president amid much fanfare initially and I figured well fuck it he's just another Gary Hart or Paul Tsongas or Joe Lieberman who would carry the flag for the Democratic Right and if I voted I'd vote in vain for Kucinich again. Or maybe Edwards. Or if things got desperate, Clinton.

Before all this, however, some weird things were happening in the runup to the 2006 midterms. Bill Frist had managed to sneak into a Port Appropriations Bill something called "The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act," something the two most right-wing members of the Senate, McCain and Kyl had been trying to get through without success for years, only to be stiffed by some unlikely bedfellows, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Tom DeLay. DeLay was gone, though, and having failed to deliver to the Christian Right on anything in 2006, the Republicans, according to Rachel Maddow "made the elections about Pot, Porn and Poker." Who gives a shit, right?

I gave a shit because I am a sports and horse bettor and a poker player. And all of a sudden the thing my attorneys most feared for me had happened. My work was depending on one's interpretation, not legal, not practical, or in the words of McCain "just like being an Al-Qaida sympathizer." Never mind that McCain has an enormous credit line at Caesar's, a huge dice jones and an NCAA tourney website that came awfully close to violating the law he wanted. Nevertheless, adios Kelso. Your uncle Kelso happens to like to work and obey the law. And we'll leave that topic right there.

I like Latin America. I already spoke fluent, unaccented Spanish and the vibe I had enjoyed in the gambling world in NYC seemed to be the prevailing one in all parts of the culture down here. There was such a mix of people that it was hardly an insult to refer to someone as "Eduardo el negro" to distinguish him from "Eduardo el blanco" from "Eduardo el trigueno" from "Eduardo el judio" from "Eduardo el 'gay'" from "Eduardo el arabe" from "Eduardo el chino" and so on. It's not PC by USA standards but unlike in Big Sammy it's NOT NORMATIVE, MERELY DESCRIPTIVE. Nobody cares. It's a big mix and not tribal by skin or culture. Everybody's making too much money and having too much fun.

So, without yours truly, the campaign marched on. The more I saw of Clinton the more impressed I was with her. The more I saw of Obama the less I understood him. Although he is four-square opposed to legalized gambling in the US and Clinton is for it, Obama after some bad rookie mistakes abandoned the homophobia (McClurkin), the close connection with Pat Robertson, Joe Lieberman, Rick Warren and the rest of the Christian Right unless of course he wanted to peel off some white votes from Clinton, but not for the most part. He had adopted a more neutral "hope" thingy and while his tone remains lecturing and hectoring about the evils of partisanship and it's hard to discern where he is on the issues, he's MINUS-800 to win this thing and that's the reality.

I think Clinton would have made a good president. I suspected it with the first debate and became fully-committed when she laid out an extremely thoughtful plan to deal with the sub-prime crisis: rate and foreclosure freeze during a work-out period for the borrowers and a "Brady Bond" repackaging of the CMOs. Each side gives up a little. Each side gets a little. Simple. Elegant. Demonstrative of a very good grasp of economic theory and practice. OF ALL THE WORDS OF TONGUE OR PEN, THE SADDEST ARE THESE "IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN."

So, let's take a realistic look at what we've got here. It may not be over but I've been aroung gambling my whole life and MINUS-800 screams. You can read it in neon or read it in braille.

Pat Buchanan with Rachel Maddow on Hardball reinforced all I needed to know: "John McCain makes George Bush look like Ghandi." Obama's not the one I wanted. He's the least worst of two right now.

For all of those innocent middle-American White Christian people who worship the ground he walks on, I fucking feel sorry for you. The liberals among you thought you were in on the ground floor of the next Martin Luther King, Jr. The conservatives among you, with somewhat more clarity, thought you were getting a Republican in Democrat's clothing. The sad facts are these. You got sold a Ford over a Chevy or a Chevy over a Ford. It's politics. There's a candidate, Obama. He's got some assets. He's intelligent and he's a good public speaker. He's got some liabilities. He's never been super-concerned about the details; he's basically a law-student who became a Ward-Man, and he's kind of brittle. Then you've got -- sorry, Virginia -- a sharp, Jewish campaign manager named David Axelrod who specializes in running center-left African-American campaigns. The way Carville ran lunch-pail campaigns. The way Shrum ran safe campaigns with tested candidates. The way Jim Dean runs the modern day John V. Lindsays. The way Mulholland runs hardball local California campaigns.

Obama and Axelrod sit down together, take stock of all this and go out and win. Polling bad with African-American voters? Gin up some bullshit and call Bill and Hillary Clinton racists. It doesn't sell with everyone but it's enough. And it's one of those "when did you stop beating your wife?" kind of accusations. What else? Getting demolished in these debates over and over again? Play to the strength and make the campaign about anything but the issues. Get busted on it? Do everything to keep it off the issues. Get "mad" and proclaim "Just Words?" There's nothing wrong with any of that. That's politics and Obama's gotten better at it and he's going to need every ounce of it versus McCain. But he isn't Jesus-Christ-On-Rye-Toast. This rule applies to every single person in every single profession: you do the best you can with the limited tools you have. Obama's aware of it. Axelrod's aware of it. But all those cherubic faces in munchkin-land apparently aren't aware of it. it isn't their fault. The press tells them a narrative that Obama and Axelrod have told the press. Or that Clinton and Penn have told the press. Politics is "transformative" in munchkin-land. If you've seen the turkeys get passed out before Thanksgiving and the hams passed out before Christmas, you know exactly how "transformative" politics is. It ain't. It's about winning.

With African-Americans who take pride in the guy, I can't argue. Who knows how I'd feel if Feingold or Wyden were in Obama's position? Electing Obama, warts and all, might cleanse the poison in Big Sammy's bloodstream. It might not. There's nothing particularly wrong with wanting a candidate who looks like you to take the next step forward. There's nothing particularly wrong with women especially identifying with Clinton.

But there are a few things I like about Obama. His brains, of course. His ambition, of course. His wife and her "fuck you" to all those false-patriots. His refusal to wear that ridiculous flag-pin. That he has re-adopted an anti-Iraq War stance. That he seems to have cleaned the homophobes out of the Augean stables. Maybe. I've heard otherwise, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I also happen to like his middle name: what can I say I've got a lot of Panamanian-Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian buddies down here and they love the idea of a guy with a middle-name "Hussein" winning. It doesn't mean "Saddam Hussein." It would be like how an American would feel if a guy named "Doug" or "Tommy" won the presidency of Lebanon or something. "Hussein" is a pretty common name, really.

So, I think we're all clear now. It's really a matter of how's Obama going to beat this rat-fuck bastard McCain. While Obama may well want to revisit Carter-Torrijos or invade Venezuela under Lieberman's tutelage and fuck up my life again, McCain surely will. Hillary was cool with this bend in the river because it's a signature diplomatic and economic achievement of Bill's adminstration. Nader and McKinney are ultra-chill on everything. Those options are not available.

I think I know how Obama's planning to run against McCain, effectively running as Joe Lieberman versus Dick Cheney in 2000, agreeing with everything McCain says and criticizing his own party while slamming hard on "hope" and "change" and assuming it will sell. It won't.

The press way preferred Obama to Clinton, but the press adores John McCain and I doubt anyone's cutting Obama any slack on anything against McCain. Only a vague sense of liberal guilt might be be a screen door, but it won't be a bank vault against a war-hero. And McCain is a fucking bastard. Make no mistake about that. He's the guy who insulted Chelsea Clinton when she was a child in the vilest way you can imagine. He's already called Clinton a "bitch" once this campaign. Nobody should think for a second that McCain had nothing to do with that Cincinnati radio host saying "Barack HUSSEIN Obama." And the press not only excuses it, they encourage and applaud him. McCain' s not going to do Obama the favors that Clinton did. If it were me as Clinton following the November 15 Las Vegas debate in which she had Obama literally stammering responses and subsequent to that had widened her lead to 23% over Obama, I would have buried him then and there, looking to isolate Edwards. I would have hit him with three things: Tony Rezko, Donny McClurkin and if he was still in double-digits, I would have run a commercial with Chris Rock's routine at the Obama fund-raiser talking about "that White lady." And if I'm Clinton and Obama's still a problem for me in early December, I'm going to cut into his male vote by making him seem unmasculine because of his close relationship with Oprah Winfrey figuring that I might also get lucky and trap him into the gay-baiting move again, and then would have sand-bagged him with the Mayor Newsome stuff. Given how uncomfortable Edwards was on gay-rights, I might have even converted the 7-10 split and would have been left with Richardson and Dodd. But I'm a sonofabitch and I love to win, whereas Clinton is a polished campaigner. She ran her campaign and she's likely to get beat. McCain's campaign style makes the tactics I'd have used seem tame.

So, some unsolicited opinions from a sonofabitch who loves to win for Senator Obama. Obama's on his own here and he's got to get to work. He's got to run as a Democrat. Not a "new" Democrat. A Democrat. We're all pretty much in accord that he's a good politician and getting better but this "hope and change" is a campaign theme, right? He's very, very, very intelligent and he needs to start getting really good at economics and foreign policy issues. McCain is not very intelligent but he's charming and he's steadfast, so Obama can trump him with superior brains but also with superior information. If Obama falls out of love with himself and hits the books and trusts that he already sold "hope" and "change" and gets ready to hit McCain hard and make him look like the boneheaded creep he really is, Obama can win this thing and be a president everyone can respect.

Yeah, right. By the way, it's OBAMA-200 right now over McCAIN. If Obama's nomination gets sewn up soon and after the choice of VP you don't hear specifics but you DO hear "I respect you, John, for your magnificent service to your country and your dedication to the 'surge strategy' and in the hope of getting beyond the tired partisan politics of yesterday, there will be a place for your sage advice in an Obama Administration," well...just take PLUS+180 on McCain for everything you can beg, borrow or steal. Cash it in on the first Wednesday following the first Tuesday in November and come down here and party with me as we all await the ICBMs to be launched.

Me? I like Balbina Herrera of the PRD for President in 2009 down here. If she loses to "Toro" Perez-Balladares, that's not quite as good, but it's still PRD. And if Varela of the center-right opposition wins, well I've got connections in his camp, too, and though he's right of current President Martin Torrijos, Herrera and Perez-Balladares, he's far left of Obama to say nothing of McCain. So, the party will be good. Until the first ICBM hits.

Kelso's Nuts love you